Part Three • Metro-land 215 Metro-land A script for television,* written and narrated by John Betjeman VISION MUSIC COMMENTARY Opening title ‘Tiger Rag’ ‒ sequence: Fast run The from front of train, Temperance Finchley Rd/ Seven Chesham. Subliminal Superimpositions of Metro-land METRO-LAND ‘Build a Little with Home’ ‒ Roy John Betjeman Fox Close-ups: Metro- JOHN BETJEMAN: land brochures Child of the First War, Forgotten by the Second, We called you Metro-land. We laid our schemes Lured by the lush brochure, down byways beckoned, To build at last the cottage of our dreams, A city clerk turned countryman again, And linked to the Metropolis by train. *Four passages have been cut from the original script. The deleted material is summarized in square brackets. J.G. The Best of Betjeman 216 VISION MUSIC COMMENTARY Still: Quainton Rd Interior: Horsted Keynes Station JB walks from bar Metro-land ‒ the creation of the on to platform and Metropolitan Railway gets into Met. Which, as you know, was the first Carriage steam Underground in the world. In the tunnels, the smell of sulphur was awful. Close-up: ‘Live in When I was a boy, ‘Live in Metro-land’ on Metro-land’ was the slogan. carriage door It really meant getting out of the tunnels into the country. Interior of carriage For the line had ambitions of JB reading linking newspaper Manchester and Paris, And dropping in at London on the way. The grandiose scheme came to nothing. But then the Metropolitan had a very good idea. Archive film: ‘A Look at these fields, Trip on the Metro’ They were photographed in 1910, from the train; ‘Why not,’ said a clever member of the Board, ‘buy these orchards and farms as we go along, turn out the cattle, and fill the meadow land with houses?’ You could have a modern home of quality and distinction ‒ you might even buy an old one, if there was one left. Metro-land 217 VISION MUSIC COMMENTARY Close-up: JB Archive film And over these mild home county acres Soon there will be the estate agent, coal merchant, Post Office, shops, and rows of neat dwellings, All within easy reach of charming countryside. Bucks, Herts, and Middlesex yielded to Metro-land. And city men could breakfast on the fast train to London town. Close-up: Rails Exterior: Baker St Station Is this Buckingham Palace? Interior: Chiltern Are we at the Ritz? No. This is Court Restaurant the Chiltern Court Restaurant, JB sitting at table built above Baker Street Station, the gateway between Metro-land out there and London down there. The creation of the Metropolitan Railway. Close-up: Brochure ‘When the The brochure shows you how Daisy Opens splendid a place this was in 1913 her Eyes’ ‒ which is about the year in which Albert Sandler it was built. Here the wives from Pinner and Ruislip, after a day’s Mid-shot: JB shopping at Liberty’s or Whiteley’s, would sit waiting for Their husbands to come up from Cheapside and Mincing Lane. While they waited they could listen to the strains of the band playing for the Thé Dansant be- fore they took the train for home. The Best of Betjeman 218 VISION MUSIC COMMENTARY Archive film: ‘Leaving Baker St Early electric ‒ punctual and Station’ prompt. Off to those cuttings in the High altitude shot: Hampstead Hills, Marlborough Rd St John’s Wood, Marlborough Station Road, Train goes through No longer stations ‒ and the trains rush through. JB on platform This is all that is left of Marlborough Rd Marlborough Road Station. Up Station there the iron brackets supported the glass and iron roof. And you see that white house up there? That was where Thomas Hood Thomas Hood died. Thomas Hood the poet. He house wrote: ‘I remember, I remember, the house where I was born’, and the railway cut through his garden. Exterior: I remember Marlborough Road Marlborough Rd Station because it was the nearest Station station to the house where lived my future parents-in-law. JB exits from Angus Farewell old booking hall, once Steak House grimy brick, But leafy St John’s Wood, which St John’s Wood you served, remains, houses Fore-runner of the suburbs yet to come With its broad avenues, Detached and semi-detached villas Where lived artists and writers and military men. And here, screened by shrubs, Walled-in from public view, Metro-land 219 VISION MUSIC COMMENTARY Lived the kept women. What puritan arms have stretched within these rooms To touch what tender breasts, As the cab-horse stamped in the road outside. Sweet secret suburb on the City’s rim, St John’s Wood. 10 Langford Place: Amidst all this friviolity, ‘Agapemone’ in one place a sinister note is struck ‒ in that helmeted house where, rumour has it, The Reverend John Hugh Smyth-Pigott lived, An Anglican clergyman whose Clapton congregation declared him to be Christ, a compliment he accepted. His country house was called the Agapemone ‒ the abode of love ‒ and some were summoned to be brides of Christ. Lilies in stained Did they strew their Lord with glass windows lilies? I don’t know. But for some reason this house has an uncanny atmosphere ‒ threatening and restless. Someone seems to be looking over your shoulder. House reflected in ‘The Witch of Who is it? pond ‒ pan up to Endor,’ ‘Le Roi house David’ ‒ Honegger The Best of Betjeman 220 VISION MUSIC COMMENTARY Rails Over the points by electrical traction, Interior: Train, Out of the chimney-pots into the JB looking out of openness, Window ‘Til we come to the suburb that’s thought to be commonplace, Home of the gnome and the average citizen. Exterior: Milk Sketchley and Unigate, Dolcis float, Neasden and Walpamur. Neasden Parade ‘Neasden’ ‒ Rows of shops William Houses, milkman Rushton [Sequence: Gladstone Park, Neasden. Mr Eric Simms speaks of the Neasden Nature Trail and bird-watching. ] Met. tube train Beyond Neasden there was an approaching slowly unimportant hamlet Where for years the Metropolitan didn’t bother to stop. Wembley. Still: Wembley Slushy fields and grass farms, Tower Then, out of the mist arose Sir Edward Watkin’s dream ‒ An Eiffel Tower for London. Still: Sir Edward Sir Edward Watkin, Railway Watkin King, and Chairman of the Line, Thousands he thought, would pay to climb the Tower Which would be higher than the one in Paris. He announced a competition 500 guineas for the best design. Designs of towers Never were such flights of Victorian fancy seen. Civil engineers from Sweden and Thornton Heath, Metro-land 221 VISION MUSIC COMMENTARY Rochdale and Constantinople, entered designs. Cast iron, concrete, glass, granite and steel, Lifts hydraulic and electric, a spiral steam railway. Theatres, chapels and sanatoria in the air. Front of brochure In 1890 the lucky winner was Winning design announced. It had Turkish baths, arcades of shops, and Winter Gardens. Designed by a firm of Scots with a London office, Still: Base of Stewart, McLaren and Dunn. Tower It was to be one hundred and Pan up fifty feet higher Still: Tower Than the Eiffel Tower. But when at last it reached above the trees, Still: Top of tower And the first stage was opened to the crowds, The crowds weren’t there. They didn’t want to come. Still: Wide shot of Money ran out, tower with lake The tower lingered on, resting and rusting Interior: Wembley Until it was dismembered in 1907. Stadium This is where London’s failed JB centre of pitch Eiffel Tower stood. Watkin’s Folly as it was called. Here on this Middlesex turf, and since then the site has become quite well-known. Archive film: ‘Civic Fanfare’ It was here, Trumpeters and ‒ Elgar I can just remember the horses excitement and the hope, JB listening St George’s Day, 1924. The Best of Betjeman 222 VISION MUSIC COMMENTARY Archive film: Gun The British Empire Exhibition at salute Wembley, Flags unfurling Opened by King George the King George V and Fifth. Queen Mary Ah yes, those Imperial pavilions Exterior: Pavillions India, Sierra Leone, Fiji, With their sun-tanned sentinels of Empire outside. To me they were more interesting than Interior: Palace of The Palaces of Industry and Industry Engineering Which were too like my father’s factory. Exterior: Palace of That was the Palace of Arts Arts (today) where I used to wait While my father saw the living models in Pears’ Palace of Beauty. Exterior: Palace of How well I remember the Palace Arts (archive film) of Arts, Massive and simple outside, Almost pagan in its sombre strength, but inside … Interior: Basilica, ‘Solemn Palace of Arts Melody’ ‒ Pan up Walford Davies JB in Basilica, This is the Basilica in the Palace Palace of Arts of Arts. It was used for displaying the best Church art of 1924. A.K. Lawrence, Eric Gill, Mary Adshead, Colin Gill and so on. Today it’s used for housing the props of the pantomime, Metro-land 223 VISION MUSIC COMMENTARY ‘Cinderella on Ice’ and that kind of thing. And really it’s quite right because Church and Stage have always been closely connected. Archive film: ‘Masculine Pleasure Park Women and Feminine Men’ ‒ Savoy Havanna Band The Pleasure Park was the best thing about the Exhibition. King and Queen The King and Queen enjoyed it too ‒ There they are. Debris and Oh bygone Wembley where’s the desolation of pleasure now? Exhibition site The temples stare, the Empire passes by. This was the grandest Palace of them all. JB outside British The British Government Government Pavilion and the famous Pavilion Wembley lions.